Miguel Primo de Rivera

Miguel Primo de Rivera (8 January 1870-16 March 1930) was Prime Minister of Spain from 15 September 1923 to 28 January 1930, succeeding Manuel Garcia Prieto and preceding Damaso Berlinguer. Primo de Rivera was an inept dictator who ruled only with the support of the elites, alienating both the Spanish Army and the public. His actions discredited the monarchy, leading to its overthrow in 1931.

Biography
Miguel Primo de Rivera was born in Jerez de la Frontera, Andalusia, Spain on 8 January 1870, the nephew of Philippines governor Fernando Primo de Rivera. He grew up in a notorious aristocratic family, and he served as a junior officer in the Spanish Army in Morocco, Cuba, and the Philippines before serving as captain-general of Valencia, Madrid, and Barcelona. He became a Brigadier-General in 1911, and he led a coup against the Cortes in 1923 in reaction to the Spanish army's defeat in the Rif War. Primo de Rivera became the head of a nationalist dictatorship, and he blamed Spain's ills on self-serving, old politicians. Primo de Rivera served as president of an eight-man supreme directory that ruled Spain, and he replaced civilian officials in the provinces with middle-ranking officers as martial law was declared. Primo de Rivera's reign saw a massive boost in foreign trade and infrastructural modernization, but he censored the press, closed the country's most famous literary/political club, declared the anarchist CNT illegal, banned the Catalan language in church services, oversaw increasing income disparity between the rich and poor as inflation set in, and implemented paternalistic conservatism as the form of government. In 1925, he dismissed the military directory and replaced it with civilians, but the constitution remained suspended. By 1930, Primo de Rivera had alienated conservatives, the army, and the left, and he appealed only to the elites in power. In January 1930, recognizing that King Alfonso XIII of Spain no longer backed him and that his military colleagues gave a lukewarm response to his staying on as president, Primo de Rivera was convinced to resign. He died of fever in Paris, France on 16 March 1930 at the age of 60.